Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3576
COVID-19 Post-acute Sequelae Among Adults: 12 Month Mortality Risk

New research this week finds that people hospitalized with severe covid-19 often pay a heavy price afterward. The study concluded that these survivors were more than twice as likely to die in the subsequent 12 months compared to people who had tested negative for the virus. This relatively increased risk of death was even higher for people under the age 65. While there remains much research to be done, studies thus far have made it clear that many covid-19 survivors can experience lingering symptoms even after the infection itself has cleared up. And those who are hospitalized are all the more vulnerable to these aftereffects. Severe covid often seriously damages the lungs and other organs, while life-saving interventions like steroids, ventilators, and life support devices like ECMO can take a toll on the body as well.

Researchers from the University of Florida had already published a study in July showing that hospitalized survivors were significantly more likely to be hospitalized again within six months, compared to those with mild to moderate covid-19. This new study of theirs, based on an examination of anonymous electronic health records, instead looked at the long-term mortality risk of patients up to a year later. Nearly 14,000 patients in the same health care system were studied. These included 178 diagnosed with severe COVID-19 and 246 diagnosed with mild to moderate covid-19, as well as many others who tested negative for the virus but may have been sick for other reasons and received medical care in some way. Compared to covid-negative patients, and even after accounting for other factors like age and sex, those with severe covid were 2.5 times more likely to die in the next 12 months after their illness. Overall, just over 52% of severe covid patients died in a year's time. There was no significant increased risk of mortality for mild to moderate cases, however.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/1 ... 78434/full

Just more reasons to get vaccinated.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3578
The Omicron coronavirus variant is spreading faster in Gauteng, the epicenter of the latest outbreak in South Africa, than the delta strain or any of the earlier mutations, an adviser to the provincial government said.

There is the “strongest acceleration in community transmission ever seen in South Africa,” Bruce Mellado, the adviser, said in a presentation on Thursday. This is “consistent with dominance of a variant that is more transmissible,” he said.

South Africa announced the discovery of a new variant, later named omicron, on Nov. 25 as cases began to spike and the strain spread across the globe. National daily cases almost doubled on Wednesday, days after countries across the world halted flights to and from southern Africa.
Government scientists and actuaries at private companies have estimated that between 60% and 80% of South Africans were infected in earlier waves of the virus.

“Omicron seems to be moving at a faster speed than Delta, but at the same time what seems to be happening is that our hospitalization rate is somewhat more muted,” said Shabir Madhi, a vaccinologist at the University of the Witwatersrand. “I’m optimistic that in this resurgence, while the total number of cases will probably be greater, hospitalizations and deaths will be lower.”

While previous infections and vaccinations may prevent serious illness, authorities have noticed higher level of “reinfections,” which means “susceptibility of the population is greater,” Anne von Gottberg, a clinical microbiologist at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said during a World Health Organization briefing on Thursday.

Active cases in Gauteng will likely peak in coming weeks at about 40,000, as opposed to more than 100,000 during the third wave in the middle of this year, Mellado said. Hospitalizations due to Covid-19 will likely rise to about 4,000 compared with 9,500 in the third wave, he said.

A quarter of South Africa’s 60 million people live in Gauteng, the province that includes Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... n-s-africa

South Africa’s new daily coronavirus cases have almost tripled in three days, according to new figures released Thursday, raising alarms over the possible spread of the new omicron variant recently detected by the country’s scientists.

New daily confirmed cases rose to 11,535 on Thursday from 8,561 on Wednesday and 4,373 the previous day, according to official statistics. The cases represent a 22.4 percent positivity rate of people tested for the virus, up from 16.5 percent on Wednesday, a massive jump from a 1 percent positivity rate in early November, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said.

The majority of new infections were in the populous Gauteng province around the greater Johannesburg metropolitan area, with 8,280 cases, the NICD said.

“Omicron is probably the fastest-spreading variant that South Africa has ever seen,” said Tulio de Oliveira, director of the Center for Epidemic Response and Innovation at Stellenbosch University, reacting to news of the increase in cases.

Although scientists are warning that it is still too early to say for sure that omicron is behind the surge in cases, the rapid rise means omicron might already be overtaking the delta variant, experts said.

The delta variant was dominant in all provinces until the end of October, but the NICD said Wednesday that omicron was present in 74 percent of the genomes it sequenced in November.

Shabir Madhi, a professor of vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said all indications were that omicron could be more transmissible than delta.

“The majority of cases are currently presenting as a mild illness,” he said, adding that most patients had a dry cough, fever and night sweats.

At the current rate of infection, South Africa could see infections rising to roughly 30,000 to 40,000 a day, he added.

Officials in Gauteng province said they were preparing for the worst ahead of the holidays. “We are not panicking, but we are deeply concerned,” Gauteng Premier David Makhura said Thursday.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... s-omicron/

Five new cases in NYC and a case in Colorado and Los Angeles.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3579
The new Omicron variant of the coronavirus poses a threefold higher risk of reinfection than the currently dominant Delta variant and the Beta strain, a group of South African health bodies said on Thursday.

The South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA) and the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) said the latest findings "provide epidemiological evidence for Omicron's ability to evade immunity from prior infection".

Their statement was issued after a group of South African health organisations published a paper on medrxiv.org as a pre-print, meaning the work was not yet certified by peer review.

Earlier in the day, microbiologist Anne von Gottberg at NICD had echoed the same views at an online news conference hosted by the World Health Organization, saying South Africa was seeing an increase in COVID-19 reinfections due to Omicron.

South Africa had been seeing a sudden spike in daily reported cases of coronavirus with the government reporting 11,535 new infections on Thursday, up from 312 ten days ago.

The NICD, which alongside a wider network of health organisations does genome sequencing on samples, said on Wednesday the Omicron variant was able to get around some immunity and was fast becoming the dominant variant in the country.

An analysis of routine surveillance data from South Africa from March 2020 till Nov. 27 showed the "reinfection risk profile of Omicron is substantially higher than that associated with the Beta and Delta variants during the second and third waves," NICD said in the statement on Thursday.

An increase of reinfections rather than new infections would be an indication the new variant has developed the ability to evade natural immunity from previous infection, it said.

Juliet Pulliam, director of SACEMA and the author of the pre-print paper, said in her article that Omicron's pattern is likely to be established across all provinces of South Africa by early to mid-December, NICD said.

The analysis is based on 2,796,982 individuals with positive test results at least 90 days prior to Nov. 27, out of which 35,670 were suspected reinfections, it added.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/sa ... 021-12-02/

Beta was an earlier COVID variant that originated in South Africa.

South Africa has a population of about 60 million, about 15 million live in Guateng Province (formerly Transvaal Province).
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3580
Anthony Fauci Hits Back At Lara Logan’s Mengele Comparison

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday pulled no punches while responding to Fox Nation host Lara Logan, who compared the nation’s top infectious disease expert to infamous Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele due to his medical advice about COVID-19.

Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, slammed Logan’s comment as “absolutely preposterous and disgusting” and questioned why she hadn’t been disciplined by the Fox network.

“It’s an insult to all of the people who suffered and died under the Nazi regime in the concentration camp,” Fauci told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. “It’s unconscionable what she said.”

“Forget about the fact that she was being totally slanderous to me and, as usual, had no idea what she was talking about,” he added. “Saying that it’s as benign as flu. When did influenza kill 770,000 Americans?”

Logan has since doubled down on her claim that Fauci is similar to the man known as the “Angel of Death,” despite sparking widespread anger.

Fauci, who is no stranger to being attacked from the right, asked why no disciplinary action had been taken against Logan.

“What I find striking, Chris, is how she gets no discipline whatsoever from the Fox network,” he said. “How they can let her say that with no comment and no disciplinary action? I’m astounded by that.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anthony- ... be1af60182

Her words and acts are not freedom of the press, she has gone a step too far and should be fired and banned from broadcasting. Faux News doesn't have the fortitude to do such an act.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3582
The authorities in Nebraska on Friday reported finding six cases involving the Omicron variant, only one of which was in an unvaccinated person. One of the infected people had returned from Nigeria on Nov. 23, they said, and the other five were likely exposed through household contact with the person. None had required hospitalization.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top medical adviser to President Biden, said at a press briefing that the scientists are closely monitoring the rate at which cases double to see whether Omicron will overtake Delta to become the dominant variant in the United States — and if so, when. The variant has now been detected in six states, though most cases involve returning travelers.

Within about two weeks, he said, “we’ll know more about transmission, immune evasion and severity of disease.”

He suggested that with the emergence of the new variant, which has multiple troubling mutations that have yet to be fully assessed, booster shots were even more important. He said that studies now indicated that a third dose of the vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna markedly increased recipients’ level of antibodies, and raised the levels of memory B and T cells. All three are important indicators of how well the immune system can protect against the coronavirus.
“Although we haven’t proven it yet, there’s every reason to believe that if you get vaccinated and boosted that you would have at least some degree of cross protection, very likely against severe disease, even against the Omicron variant,” he said.
A past coronavirus infection appears to give little immunity to the new Omicron variant rippling across the globe, South African scientists warned on Thursday, potentially tearing away one layer of defense that humanity has won slowly and at immense cost.

Just a week after its existence was revealed to the world, the heavily mutated variant, which scientists fear could be the most contagious one yet, is already by far the dominant form of the virus in South Africa and spreading fast, according to officials there. Top European disease experts said Thursday that it could be the dominant form in Europe within months.

Scientists in South Africa have reported a sudden, sharp rise last month in coronavirus cases among people in that country who had already been infected, in a study that has not yet been reviewed and published by a scientific journal. The authors noted that there was no such upswing when the Beta and Delta variants emerged.

They did not say how many of those reinfections could be attributed to Omicron, but South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases reported on Wednesday that when it conducted a genetic analysis on a sampling of coronavirus-positive test results from November, almost three-quarters were the new variant.

“Population-level evidence suggests that the Omicron variant is associated with substantial ability to evade immunity from prior infection,” the authors of the unpublished study wrote.
Around half of the people who attended an office Christmas party in Oslo, where only vaccinated employees were admitted, have tested positive for the coronavirus after one guest recently returned from South Africa was found to carry the new Omicron variant, local health authorities said on Friday.

More than 120 people attended the event, held a week ago by a solar power company. Of the positive tests sequenced so far, between 15 and 20 were likely to be the Omicron variant, according to Dr. Tine Ravlo, a local chief physician involved in tracking the outbreak, who added that not all of the 60 coronavirus cases found so far had yet been fully checked for the variant.

“We are expecting more of them to likely be Omicron infections,” she said.

A spokesman for the company, Scatec, said that only vaccinated staff had been admitted to the party, and everyone had tested negative for the coronavirus before the event.

The party was held at a restaurant called Louise in central Oslo on Nov. 26, the same day that the World Health Organization labeled Omicron a “variant of concern” and many countries started closing their borders to passengers from southern Africa, where it was first identified.
The Scatec spokesman, Stian Tvede Karlsen, said that the employee first found to have the variant had arrived back in Norway from visiting a regional office in Cape Town before news of the variant had come out.

In order to curb further spread of the variant, the Norwegian government announced on Thursday additional restrictions in and around Oslo. Enforcement started at midnight.

They include the obligation to wear masks anywhere that social distance cannot be maintained, including on subways and buses or in shops; a return to working from home if possible; and a cap on crowds of 100 people, except at theaters and other places with fixed seats, where up to 600 can be present. Only table service is permitted for alcoholic drinks, and restaurants and events need to register guests.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/12/03 ... iant-covid

If the Omicron reinfection rate is shown to be high, that is bad news for those people who are not vaccinated but had COVID and felt themselves immune. They could become victims of Omicron again stretching health care resources.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3585
featureless wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:26 pm So glad my company Christmas party is tonight and not two weeks from now. Will I sneak under the wire? I guess we'll find out. (I'll spend as little time indoors as possible)
Good call. We have small gathering tomorrow night, it’ll be mostly outdoors. Wife is getting her booster Sunday. After not going to many gatherings for awhile. Perhaps a few shoot meets with LGCers.
Image
Image

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3587
A judge denied a request by the Los Angeles city firefighters' union for a preliminary injunction preventing enforcement of a mandate requiring its employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 pending resolution of a labor issue, saying the balancing of harms favored protecting the public's health.

"The court finds (United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112) has not made the significant showing of irreparable harm necessary to enjoin a public entity in the performance of its duties," Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mary H. Strobel wrote in finalizing her ruling Friday.

The judge said that even if all of the 789 unvaccinated LAFD employees leave as a result of the vaccine mandate, the department has developed contingency staffing and firehouse plans to ensure the safety of the public.

She also noted that all current probationary firefighters have complied with the vaccine mandate.

"Evidence also supports that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a significant toll on the city's firefighters and even resulted in the death of two of its members," the judge wrote.

"City firefighters work in unique circumstances, living together for 24 hour periods, and are required to interact with — and even treat — the most vulnerable segments of the city."

Strobel issued a tentative ruling Thursday that generally reflected her thinking in her final decision. She heard arguments Thursday afternoon and took the matter under submission.

On Nov. 12, in Strobel's absence, Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff denied the union's request for a temporary restraining order. The union filed the petition on Nov. 8.

In August, the city adopted an ordinance directing city employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus unless they can demonstrate a medical or religious exemption. The City Council subsequently approved a plan that gave employees more time to get vaccinated.

The union has a pending unfair practices charge before the Los Angeles City Employee Relations Board and wants a preliminary injunction issued until that matter is resolved. The union's ERB complaint alleges the city has bargained in bad faith concerning the mandate.

"The city violated its clear legal obligations under California's public employment relations laws by failing and refusing to bargain in good faith with UFLAC over the effects of its decision to implement a COVID-19 vaccine mandate," the union's court papers stated.

On behalf of the union, Attorney Dana Martinez told the judge Friday that the union is not challenging the validity of the ordinance but rather the city's alleged decision to not abide by proper bargaining procedures. She said the city's claim that an emergency existed is undermined on several fronts, including the extension of the vaccination deadline that put unvaccinated firefighters back into the community.

Martinez said that about 400 firefighters could be put on unpaid leave later this month. She further said additional harm has been done to the union by antagonism created between the leadership and some members who question why the city can't be thwarted and wonder what their union dues are being used for. Assistant City Attorney Vivienne A. Swanigan said those firefighters who have not filed for exemptions by Dec. 18 may be fired and will be put on unpaid leave. However, she said job losses will not be automatic because all are entitled to due process hearings.

Deputy City Attorney Jennifer Gregg added that the firefighters would even have due process rights before they are placed on unpaid leave.

In her ruling, the judge said that of the unvaccinated firefighters who have not yet pursued or obtained an exemption, some may ask for an exemption or voluntarily comply with the vaccine mandate.

"Thus, (the union) substantially overstates the number of LAFD employees that would be at immediate risk of termination as a result of the ordinance...," Strobel wrote.
https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/pu ... ne-mandate

For every firefighter fired for not getting vaccinated, thousands will be waiting to test for that vacant position.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3588
'Utterly Obscene': Just 8 Pfizer and Moderna Investors Became $10 Billion Richer After Omicron Emerged

In the first week that the Omicron variant sparked global fears of a new wave of infections, a small handful of investors and executives with Pfizer and Moderna—currently the world's preeminent makers of Covid-19 vaccines—saw over $10 billion in new wealth, with the Moderna's CEO alone adding over $800 million to his personal fortune.

Based on data compiled by Global Justice Now and released Saturday, "just 8 top Pfizer and Moderna shareholders" added a combined $10.31 billion to their fortunes last week after stock prices soared in response to the emergence of Omicron. According to a statement by the group:

Moderna’s shares skyrocketed after the announcement and settled at $310.61/share on Wednesday 1 December, up 13.61% from $273.39/share since Wednesday 24 November, the day before the announcement. Pfizer's shares rose by 7.41% from $50.91/share to $54.68/share.

Moderna’s CEO, Stephane Bancel, personally became more than $824m richer in the week after the announcement, with the value of his shares rising from $6,052,522,978 to $6,876,528,630. He sold off 10,000 shares for $319 each on 26 November, the day after the variant was announced, cashing out $3.19 million.

At close of business on Tuesday, Bancel’s shares had grown by $1.7 billion since the announcement, before falling after the company lost a legal dispute over patents.

Bancel has refused to share the recipe for Moderna’s vaccine with the World Health Organisation to help scale-up manufacturing of mRNA vaccines through its new hub in South Africa. WHO scientists are now trying to reverse-engineer the vaccine. His company is also waging a legal battle to erase the role of massive public funding and public scientists in developing the jab.

With nations in the European Union, the United Kingdom, and others continuing to block a demand for a vaccine patent waiver at the World Trade Organization, public health campaigners have hammered government leaders for doing the bidding of the pharmaceutical industry. Anger has become especially harsh because the emergence of new and dangerous variants was predicted as the likely outcome if nations did not move swiftly to vaccinate the world by making shots universally available.

"Pharmaceutical companies knew that grotesque levels of vaccine inequality would create prime conditions for new variants to emerge," said Tim Bierley, pharma campaigner at Global Justice Now. "They let Covid-19 spread unabated in low and middle-income countries. And now the same pharma execs and shareholders are making a killing from a crisis they helped to create. It's utterly obscene."

“At every turn," he continued, "these companies have obstructed efforts to more equitably distribute vaccines around the world. They have made more than enough money from the pandemic, selling two of the most lucrative drugs in history. It's time to hand over the recipe for these essential medicines to the WHO so we can finally end this pandemic."

While a scheduled decision on the WTO patent waiver was postponed last week, progressives worldwide have insisted that there will be no end to the global pandemic until vaccine apartheid is brought to an end.

Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and trade expert Lori Wallach argued in an op-ed last week that the pandemic cannot be defeated until the waiver is approved.

"As the Omicron variant shows, as long as there are raging outbreaks anywhere, Covid-19 will mutate and the possibility of more infectious or deadly strains increases," the pair wrote. "That's why, unless people everywhere are vaccinated, we face the prospect of an endless pandemic."

When the "underlying problem is a lack of global supply," they argued—and more vaccines and boosters will be needed to fend off variants—the WTO waiver "is an obvious way of increasing supply and helping put an end to the pandemic for good."

And as Bierley said, "It's long past time for the UK and the EU to stand on the side of global health instead of vaccine billionaires—and get behind an intellectual property waiver on Covid-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/ ... cher-after

This is like the old Dark Humor joke. The drug company Scientist goes to the CEO and says we have found the total cure for Common Cold. One shot and no more Common Cold. The CEO looks at the Scientist and says, "Kill the Cure, We make much more profit from just treating the symptoms."
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3589
Not surprising, they are publicly traded just like Pfizer, AstraZeneca, J&J and soon Novavax. And Moderna is fighting the NIH because they refused to give NIH scientists credit for helping develop their vaccine. And the Moderna CEO stated last week that they're working to reformulate their vaccine due to Omicron to vaccine everyone again, that says dollar signs to me. I'm very thankful for the vaccines, but it shouldn't surprise anyone that they're drug companies out to make money like any medical supplier.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3590
Americans are lining up for booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines at a record pace, with concerns about the newly-detected Omicron coronavirus variant spurring millions to get shots, the U.S. government said on Tuesday.

Just under a million people a day received booster doses of one of the three authorized vaccines last week, the highest rate since U.S. regulators gave the nod to additional shots for some adults in September, government data shows.

"In the last week, we've gotten nearly 7 million people a booster; that's a million booster shots in arms a day. And that's more people getting a booster shot per day than ever before," White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said on Tuesday. Around 55% of people aged 65 and older who are eligible for a booster have received one, he added.

All in all the United States administered 12.5 million vaccines in the last week, Zients said at a White House briefing, its highest rate since May.

U.S. regulators expanded eligibility for vaccine booster shots to all adults in mid-November. read more

Around 47 million people in the United states have now received a booster shot, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows, almost a quarter of all fully vaccinated adults in the country.

Close to 10 million of those people have gotten the extra shots since the Thanksgiving holiday, when South Africa reported it had found the highly mutated Omicron variant, which triggered global alarm of a surge in infections.

The surge represents a 12.5% increase compared to the boosting rate before the holiday.

News of the variant, people's desire to be reunited with family over the winter holiday season and public health messaging have pushed the demand for boosters, said infectious disease expert Dr. William Schaffner.

"I'm certainly encouraged and if that rate continues, I will be very, very pleased," said Schaffner, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

"For a while the acceptance of the boosters was happening very slowly. But there seems to be some acceleration and I'm exhilarated about the acceleration."

Boosters are a key part of President Joe Biden's Omicron response plan. The White House is working with local authorities and pharmacies to meet growing demand, Zients said.

CVS Health Corp has enough vaccine supply to meet high demand and is hiring more employees to administer doses, said spokesperson Matt Blanchette. The pharmacy chain has also increased available appointments across its locations.

"We’ve seen a significant spike in demand over the past two weeks due to multiple factors including the holidays, authorization of boosters for all and pediatric populations, and increased variant news," said Erin Loverher, a Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc spokesperson.

Preliminary evidence indicates that the variant likely has a higher degree of transmissibility but is less severe, top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday.

Although more data is needed, early cases of Omicron seem to require fewer hospitalizations and patients are less likely to need oxygen, Fauci told reporters at the White House briefing.

More data is expected next week, Fauci said, but it will take a few weeks to reach any definitive conclusions.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fauci- ... 021-12-07/
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3591
Pfizer said Wednesday that a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine may protect against the new Omicron variant even though the initial two doses appear significantly less effective.

Pfizer and its partner, BioNTech, said lab tests showed a booster dose increased by 25-fold the level of so-called neutralizing antibodies against the Omicron variant.

Pfizer announced the preliminary laboratory data in a press release; the data have not yet undergone scientific review. The two companies already are working to create an Omicron-specific vaccine in case it’s needed.

Scientists have speculated that the high jump in antibodies that comes with a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine might be enough to counter any decrease in effectiveness.

Antibody levels predict how well a vaccine may prevent infection with the coronavirus, but they are just one layer of the immune system’s defenses. Pfizer said two doses of the vaccine may still induce protection against severe disease.

“Although two doses of the vaccine may still offer protection against severe disease caused by the Omicron strain, it’s clear from these preliminary data that protection is maximized with a third dose of our vaccine,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement.

Pfizer’s announcement had an immediate impact on U.S. markets. Futures that had pointed to a lower opening reversed course in seconds and swung solidly to the positive, with the Dow jumping almost 200 points.
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/st ... on-variant


This is in response to a South African study released yesterday on those vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine.
A report out of South Africa offered a first glimpse at how vaccinated people might fare against the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

Laboratory experiments found that Omicron seems to dull the power of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but also hinted that people who have received a booster shot might be better protected.

The study, published online on Tuesday, found that antibodies produced by vaccinated people were much less successful at keeping the Omicron variant from infecting cells than other forms of the coronavirus.

Scientists said the results were somewhat worrisome, but no cause for panic. The data suggests that vaccinated people might be vulnerable to breakthrough infections with Omicron, which is spreading rapidly in South Africa and has appeared in dozens of countries around the world.

But vaccines stimulate a wide-ranging immune response that involves more than just antibodies. So these experiments offer an incomplete picture of how well the vaccine protects against hospitalization or death from Omicron.

“While I think there’s going to be a lot of infection, I’m not sure this is going to translate into systems collapsing,” Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa, who led the research, said in an interview. “My guess is that it’ll be under control.”

Dr. Sigal and his colleagues worked at breakneck speed over the past two weeks to grow the virus and then test antibodies against it. “If I don’t die from the virus, I’ll die of exhaustion,” he said.

Originally, Dr. Sigal feared that vaccines might not provide any protection at all. It was possible that the Omicron variant had evolved a new way of entering cells, which would have rendered antibodies from vaccines useless. “Then all our efforts would be trash,” he said.

Fortunately, that proved not to be the case.

Dr. Sigal and his colleagues used antibodies from six people who received the Pfizer vaccine without ever having had Covid-19. They also analyzed antibodies from six other people who had been infected before getting the Pfizer vaccine.

The researchers found that the antibodies from all of the volunteers performed worse against Omicron than they did against an earlier version of the coronavirus. Overall, their antibodies’ potency against Omicron dropped dramatically, to about one-fortieth of the level seen when tested with an earlier version of the virus. That low level of antibodies may not protect against breakthrough Omicron infections.


Theodora Hatziioannou, a virologist at Rockefeller University who was not involved in the research, said that number was not surprising. “It’s more or less what we expected,” she said.

The results could help explain some high-profile superspreading events caused by Omicron. At an office Christmas party in Norway, the virus seems to have infected at least half of 120 vaccinated attendees.

Dr. Sigal announced the results on Twitter Tuesday afternoon.

His team found a distinct difference between the two sets of volunteers. The antibodies from the six uninfected vaccinated people were very weak against Omicron. But among the volunteers who had Covid-19 before vaccination, five out of six still produced fairly potent responses.

One reason for the difference is that people who are vaccinated after an infection produce higher levels of antibodies than do people who were not infected.

Dr. Sigal said the experiments will not be able to say much about how well boosters protect against Omicron until researchers directly test antibodies from people who have received them. But he suspected that the increased level of antibodies would provide good protection. “The more you’ve got, the better you’ll be,” he said.

Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., who was not involved in the new study, agreed that booster shots were likely to help fend off the new variant.

“I expect boosters to restore better levels of protection,” he said. “And, importantly, early clinical data from South Africa suggest that immunity — whether from vaccines or prior infections — is still effective in preventing the more severe forms of Covid-19.”


Dr. Hatziioannou was less certain about boosters. She and her colleagues are running experiments on antibodies from boosters to test whether they will produce the same robust protection seen in people who got vaccines after infection. “I want to say yes, but we have to wait,” she said.

Pfizer and Moderna have said that they were testing their vaccines against Omicron, and that they would be able to produce vaccines specifically tailored to the variant in roughly three months.

Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said that the study reinforced the need to accelerate the development of Omicron-specific shots. Even though there remains some uncertainty about how widely the variant will spread, he said, the best way of restoring protection against Omicron will be to give people a vaccine containing Omicron’s genetic information.

“Given the very large drop in neutralizing antibody titers that are seen here with Omicron,” he said, “certainly in my view it would merit pushing forward as fast as possible with making Omicron-specific vaccines, as long as it seems like there’s a possibility it could spread widely.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/12/07 ... on-vaccine


Bourla the CEO of Pfizer said that they can have a reformulated vaccine to combat Omicron out by March 2022. Keep your CDC cards handy, we'll probably be getting a 4th dose. No word on lab experiments by Moderna, J&J or AstraZeneca.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3593
sikacz wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 9:25 am Wife got boosted Sunday, so we are both up on our vaccinations. She had some muscle aches and fever which is getting near normal now. With her MS the fever made her a bit unsteady so I encouraged her to stay in bed. LoL.

Congrats to your wife, side effects will pass ! Smart for her to stay in bed, that means you're providing breakfast and other meals for her in bed?
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3594
highdesert wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 10:10 am
sikacz wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 9:25 am Wife got boosted Sunday, so we are both up on our vaccinations. She had some muscle aches and fever which is getting near normal now. With her MS the fever made her a bit unsteady so I encouraged her to stay in bed. LoL.

Congrats to your wife, side effects will pass ! Smart for her to stay in bed, that means you're providing breakfast and other meals for her in bed?
Was. She’s up and about today.
Image
Image

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3595
From the start of the pandemic, the coronavirus seemed to target people carrying extra pounds. Patients who were overweight or obese were more likely to develop severe Covid-19 and more likely to die. Though these patients often have health conditions like diabetes that compound their risk, scientists have become increasingly convinced that their vulnerability has something to do with obesity itself.

Now researchers have found that the coronavirus infects both fat cells and certain immune cells within body fat, prompting a damaging defensive response in the body. “The bottom line is, ‘Oh my god, indeed, the virus can infect fat cells directly,’” said Dr. Philipp Scherer, a scientist who studies fat cells at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who was not involved in the research.

“Whatever happens in fat doesn’t stay in fat,” he added. “It affects the neighboring tissues as well.”

The research has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, but it was posted online in October. If the findings hold up, they may shed light not just on why patients with excess pounds are vulnerable to the virus, but also on why certain younger adults with no other risks become so ill.

The study’s authors suggested the evidence could point to new Covid treatments that target body fat.

“Maybe that’s the Achilles’ heel that the virus utilizes to evade our protective immune responses — by hiding in this place,” Dr. Vishwa Deep Dixit, a professor of comparative medicine and immunology at Yale School of Medicine, said.

The finding is particularly relevant to the United States, which has one of the highest rates of obesity in the world. Most American adults are overweight, and 42 percent have obesity. Black, Hispanic, Native American and Alaska Native people in the U.S. have higher obesity rates than white adults and Asian Americans; they have also been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, with death rates roughly double those of white Americans.

“This could well be contributing to severe disease,” Dr. Catherine Blish, a professor at Stanford University Medical Center and one of the report’s two senior authors, said. “We’re seeing the same inflammatory cytokines that I see in the blood of the really sick patients being produced in response to infection of those tissues.”

Body fat used to be thought of as inert, a form of storage. But scientists now know that the tissue is biologically active, producing hormones and immune-system proteins that act on other cells, promoting a state of nagging low-grade inflammation even when there is no infection. Inflammation is the body’s response to an invader, and sometimes it can be so vigorous that it is more harmful than the infection that triggered it.

Fat tissue is composed mostly of fat cells, or adipocytes. It also contains pre-adipocytes, which mature into fat cells, and a variety of immune cells, including a type called adipose tissue macrophages.

Dr. Blish, with colleagues at Stanford and in Germany and Switzerland, carried out experiments to see if fat tissue obtained from bariatric surgery patients could become infected with the coronavirus, and tracked how various types of cells responded. The fat cells themselves could become infected, the scientists found, yet did not become very inflamed. But certain immune cells called macrophages also could be infected, and they developed a robust inflammatory response.

Even stranger, the pre-adipocytes were not infected, but contributed to the inflammatory response. (The scientists did not examine whether particular variants were more destructive in this regard than others.)

The research team also obtained fat tissue from the bodies of European patients who had died of Covid and discovered the coronavirus in fat near various organs.

The idea that adipose tissue might serve as a reservoir for pathogens is not new, Dr. Dixit said. Body fat is known to harbor a number of them, including H.I.V. and the influenza virus. The coronavirus appears to be able to evade the body fat’s immune defenses, which are limited and incapable of fighting it effectively. And in people who are obese, there can be a lot of body fat.

A man whose ideal weight is 170 pounds but who weighs 250 pounds is carrying a substantial amount of fat in which the virus may “hang out,” replicate and trigger a destructive immune system response, said Dr. David Kass, a professor of cardiology at Johns Hopkins. “If you really are very obese, fat is the biggest single organ in your body,” Dr. Kass said.

The coronavirus “can infect that tissue and actually reside there,” he said. “Whether it hurts it, kills it or at best, it’s a place to amplify itself — it doesn’t matter. It becomes kind of a reservoir.”

As the inflammatory response snowballs, cytokines trigger even more inflammation and the release of additional cytokines. “It’s like a perfect storm,” he said. Dr. Blish and her colleagues speculated that infected body fat may even contribute to “long Covid,” a condition describing troublesome symptoms like fatigue that persist for weeks or months after recovery from an acute episode.

The data also suggest that Covid vaccines and treatments may need to take into account the patient’s weight and fat stores.

“This paper is another wake-up call for the medical profession and public health to look more deeply into the issues of overweight and obese individuals, and the treatments and vaccines we’re giving them,” said Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has studied the heightened risk that Covid poses to those with obesity.

“We keep documenting the risk they have, but we still aren’t addressing it,” Dr. Popkin said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/heal ... esity.html
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3596
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the first drug for widespread use in preventing Covid in Americans with weakened immune systems who have not been adequately protected by vaccines.

The antibody treatment, which was developed by AstraZeneca and will be sold under the brand name Evusheld, is engineered to be “long-acting,” meaning the body metabolizes it more slowly so that it can stay active for months. That is expected to offer longer-lasting protection — perhaps for half a year — compared to the monoclonal antibody treatments that are given to high-risk people already sick with Covid.

The F.D.A. authorized AstraZeneca’s treatment for people with immune problems, a group that includes blood cancer patients, transplant recipients and people taking drugs that suppress the immune system. The authorization also included the very small number of people for whom vaccines are not recommended because they are allergic to Covid vaccines or their ingredients.

The United States has contracted with AstraZeneca to buy up to 700,000 doses of the treatment. A Biden administration health official said the doses will be allocated proportionally to states and that the first doses will begin to be distributed at no cost within the next few weeks.

“People who are immunocompromised have spent the last year not celebrating the vaccine but instead being more and more afraid of getting Covid and the implications of getting Covid,” said Dr. Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins University. “The immunocompromised population has been waiting for this for months and begging for this for months.”

Scientists are scrambling to run lab experiments to see how well Evusheld and other antibody treatments hold up to the Omicron variant, which has caused alarm because it contains mutations in the spike protein that is the target of some Covid drugs. AstraZeneca said that the mutations relevant to its treatment that have been tested so far in experiments do not suggest that the drug’s effectiveness will be significantly weakened against the variant.

AstraZeneca’s treatment is given via an intramuscular injection, like vaccines. It was shown to be strongly effective at preventing Covid in a clinical trial, reducing the risk of developing a symptomatic infection by 83 percent. That study mostly enrolled people who were at high risk of getting Covid, but the company has not broken out the results for people with immune problems.

A growing body of research has shown that many people with weak immune systems do not respond well to Covid vaccines, leaving them vulnerable to infection. The F.D.A. authorized third shots for such people long before they were recommended for the general population, but even three shots may not be enough for some.

An estimated 5 percent of the population is considered to be immunocompromised. Dr. Segev estimated that that has translated into millions of Americans who are not sufficiently protected by vaccines. AstraZeneca estimated that about five million people in the United States may benefit from its drug.

The F.D.A. said that Evusheld may be effective at preventing Covid for six months. That is thought to be longer than the protection provided by another antibody drug, from Regeneron, that the F.D.A. authorized over the summer to prevent Covid-19 in a limited number of patients with compromised immune systems who had not yet been exposed to the virus. They were at high risk of exposure as a result of living in nursing homes, prisons, or under similar conditions.

The vast majority of people with immune-system problems have become eligible for monoclonal antibody treatments, which are typically infused at a hospital or clinic, only after they had already been exposed to the virus or gotten sick.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/12/09 ... iant-covid
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3598
Most of the current surge is Delta, though Omicron is out there but not always diagnosed.
The Omicron strain of the coronavirus was detected in California’s wastewater last month, even before the World Health Organization declared it a “variant of concern,” lab data suggests.

In a statement to The Times, the California Department of Public Health said that a sample of wastewater collected in Merced County on Nov. 25 contained a mutation that suggests the Omicron variant was present in California at that time.

That’s one day after South African scientists informed the World Health Organization of the new variant and a day before the WHO gave it the name Omicron and declared it the newest coronavirus variant of concern.

The finding reinforces observations that scientists have made in recent weeks: that Omicron was rapidly spreading across the world before global health officials were aware it existed.

The first Omicron case identified in the U.S., in a San Francisco resident, returned home Nov. 22 from a trip to South Africa and became symptomatic on or around Nov. 25 — Thanksgiving Day.

Los Angeles County’s first verified Omicron case was detected in a traveler who also returned on Nov. 22 after a trip to South Africa via London.

Sampling wastewater for coronavirus-related particles is being used to track pandemic trends.

In California, several groups of scientists are monitoring wastewater for coronavirus samples, including experts affiliated with Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Merced, UC San Diego and the state Department of Public Health.

A Stanford group reported to the state that it detected a mutation suggestive of — but not specific for — Omicron in wastewater not only in Merced County, but also Sacramento County, the Department of Public Health said in its statement.

The samples were retested and confirmed using a second, more specific lab procedure indicating the variant is likely present in Sacramento and Merced counties, state officials said.

There have been more than a dozen confirmed Omicron cases identified in California, with the latest reported in Santa Clara County on Thursday. Other cases have been detected in Alameda, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Yolo and Santa Clara counties.

Although there’s been a scattering of cases, there have been no Omicron outbreaks in the state. Officials have said that early indications are the variant is highly transmissible, but it might not cause as illness as severe as the Delta variant.

The findings come as health officials from a number of California counties say they’re seeing early signs of a rebound in coronavirus cases related to Thanksgiving, which some worry could be the beginning of the state’s fifth COVID-19 surge. Those cases are connected to the Delta variant.

It’s still far from clear whether California will see a significant spike in cases this winter or if the combination of relatively high vaccination rates and various safety rules limits the scope of a surge.

But there are already warning signs.

Statewide, the daily average of newly reported infections has risen more than 30% since before Thanksgiving. The number of Californians hospitalized with COVID-19 also has climbed during that time, interrupting weeks of mostly steady declines.

In Los Angeles County, weekly coronavirus case rates have climbed by 33% over the last two weeks, sending the nation’s most populous county back into the worst coronavirus transmission tier, colored red on maps published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Scientists have detected traces of omicron in wastewater in Houston, Boulder, Colo., and two cities in Northern California.

It's a signal that indicates the coronavirus variant is present in those cities, and it highlights the useful data produced by wastewater surveillance research as omicron looms.

Gathering this data requires careful collaboration among wastewater facilities, engineers, epidemiologists and labs. Scientists and public health officials say the data derived from samples of feces can help fill in the gaps from other forms of surveillance and help them see the big picture of the coronavirus pandemic, especially as a new variant emerges.

In San Jose, Calif., it all starts in a tunnel under the San José-Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility, which processes sewage from about 1.4 million people and 22,000 businesses.

Chances are that in many parts of Silicon Valley, what goes down the toilet ends up at this large plant at the south end of the San Francisco Bay.

"Every time you flush, think of us," said Deputy Director Amit Mutsuddy as he gave a tour and cursed the seagulls that feed on the fat floating on top of raw sewage settling in long tanks.

Staff members here retrieve samples daily as part of their regular lab work. They send additional test tubes by courier to get tested for the coronavirus at an outside lab that partners with Stanford University and the Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network (SCAN).

The SCAN project tests wastewater from plants around Northern California. It's only one of many on the hunt for the coronavirus, including omicron, in wastewater across the U.S. and around the world.

If there are strands of omicron RNA in that gunk, researchers can identify omicron at concentrations as small as one or two infections out of 100,000 people.

"As you can imagine, thousands of different kinds of diseases exist in the sewer. We work with them safely," Mutsuddy said. "It has not been anything new for us. It's just another coronavirus."

Taking a sample involves dodging suspicious-looking puddles in a dimly lit tunnel that runs underneath the smelly tanks. Along a long hallway, there's a sink where the faucet spews globs of black sludge.

What settles to the bottom of the tanks is called primary sewage and contains the solids that go down the pipes when the toilet gets flushed. Mutsuddy said it's easier to find virus there.

"The virus is lipid based, so it tends to stick to the fatty surfaces of solids," Mutsuddy said. "That's where we thought would be the maximum potential for capturing the virus if there is a trace of its RNA."

This is step one of an important new early-warning system to understand the spread of the omicron variant, said Dr. Sara Cody, the health officer for Santa Clara County, where the San Jose plant is located.

"It makes sense to broaden our perspective and have many different surveillance tools spinning. We've seen which ones really bore fruit," she said. Wastewater surveillance "is one that has ended up being really helpful."

Last week, researchers flagged four samples from wastewater plants in Sacramento and Merced for genetic mutations that looked like omicron.

Stanford environmental engineering professor Alexandria Boehm said her team's first findings had some uncertainty while they hurried to recalibrate their testing to spot omicron RNA, rather than delta. There was a small chance that their tests were picking up on another rare variant.

But they caught a lucky break: Omicron has a mutation in common with the alpha variant, which had been circulating several months ago. So they swapped out for older tests and spotted mutations characteristic of omicron.

After another round of omicron-specific tests on Monday, Boehm was more sure. SCAN announced the discovery.

"Because we detected it with two different assays that target two different mutations in omicron, and since they were both detected, I'm very, very sure that omicron is present in the wastewater samples," she said.

So far, the variant isn't showing up in clinical data in Sacramento and Merced counties. Public health officials have not identified omicron cases in those counties from PCR tests. In California, labs sequence about 20% of positive nose swabs, and that can take weeks.

But even the initial assays from the sewage were enough to notify county public health officials in Sacramento and Merced that omicron is present in their communities.

Boehm and her colleagues are confident in their testing — omicron is there — but they're not yet saying these four positive wastewater samples show community transmission of omicron, because that would require more data over a longer period of time.

"We're going to keep looking at it in these communities. If we see it continue to be present and start to go up, it's a really good indicator that it's circulating," said Krista Wigginton, an environmental engineering professor at the University of Michigan and another lead researcher on the project.

The team has seen steady concentrations of coronavirus RNA in Sacramento over the last two weeks and declining concentrations in Merced.

The fact that researchers found the variant at all represents a leap in testing capabilities and wastewater surveillance technology.

Cell biologist Tyson Graber, who's part of a team that monitors wastewater for the coronavirus in Ottawa, Canada, compares wastewater testing to looking at an "alphabet soup" of RNA from all kinds of organisms in the sludge and trying to recognize sentences that describe coronavirus variants.

"Thankfully we do know the language," he said.

The challenge is that the RNA "letters" are combined with everything else that passes through your body, plus last night's pan drippings that got scraped down the kitchen sink — then multiply that by about several hundred thousand other people.

"We really understand the language of SARS-CoV-2 now at a rate that's unprecedented in biomedical research history," said Graber.

The testing is both specific and sensitive. Plus, it's quick, he said.

"It's almost in real time. The turnaround time for our test for the alpha variant was under eight hours. This provided us a bit of a lead time in telling the community, 'Watch out: This new variant is here. It's increasing at this particular rate, and you should be watching yourselves and reducing your contacts.' "

Cody, the health officer in Santa Clara County, which has not yet detected omicron in PCR tests or in wastewater, said the beauty of wastewater surveillance is that everyone in a given area gets tested.

Like the children's book says, everyone poops. Everyone contributes almost daily samples.

Wastewater surveillance is a way to make up for deficiencies in other forms of testing. The data it captures includes people who are infected but don't have symptoms or don't get tested, as well as people taking at-home rapid tests, as they become increasingly available.

"If people aren't going out and getting a PCR test, those results in those cases aren't reported to us, and we won't see them in our case surveillance data. But we will still see it in our wastewater data," she said.

Santa Clara County has more than a year's worth of wastewater data to compare with results from PCR tests. Cody says they've learned when clinical data trends track wastewater concentrations.

"We started to see an uptick in a number of our sewer sheds just a little bit ago, and now we are beginning to see an uptick in our case count. So I think it gives us information a bit earlier," she said.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... -in-sewage
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3599
More Missouri health departments halt COVID efforts after attorney general's threat

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A growing number of local health departments across Missouri are ending their COVID-19 response after Attorney General Eric Schmitt demanded the agencies comply with a court ruling that appears to severely limit the authority of local health officials.

Since Thursday, more than half a dozen departments have announced they are suspending coronavirus-related work after Schmitt, a Republican campaigning for U.S. Senate, sent letters earlier in the week.

The announcements come from health departments in mostly rural counties — none have been issued from the Kansas City or St. Louis metropolitan areas. Rural Missouri counties have struggled throughout the pandemic to contain cases amid low vaccination rates, pushback from the public and limited funds.

In his letters, Schmitt outlined a Nov. 22 decision by Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green, who ruled the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services didn't have the authority, under the Missouri Constitution, to "permit naked lawmaking by bureaucrats across Missouri." He struck down regulations giving local health departments the power to issue quarantine and other public health orders, such as closing businesses.

But the judge's decision may have sweeping consequences for the nuts and bolts of Missouri's pandemic response, potentially crippling the ability of local health officials to investigate outbreaks and conduct contact tracing to notify individuals who may have been exposed.

The growing realization of the ruling's possible effects comes amid the emergence of the omicron variant and as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have been on the rise in Missouri. Just over half of all Missourians have been fully vaccinated.

In southeast Missouri, the Stoddard County Public Health Center said in a Facebook post that it "has been forced to cease all COVID-19 related work at the current time. This includes: case investigation, contact tracing, quarantine orders, and public announcements of current cases/deaths, etc."

The announcements from the health departments contained remarkably similar wording. The agencies called the suspensions a "huge concern" but said they had no other choice but to follow Schmitt's "orders." The agencies said they were awaiting additional direction from DHSS.

"While our agency remains determined to protect the health of our county residents, it should be understood that this ruling greatly affects how we will be able to proceed with ALL highly communicable diseases in the future," the departments said.

DHSS hasn't publicly commented on the ruling since last week, when Director Donald Kauerauf wrote local departments suggesting they get advice from attorneys. On Tuesday, after Schmitt sent his letter, state health officials told local departments they were collecting questions about the court ruling to develop a "consistent and uniform response."

"In the meantime, I urge you to consult your local legal counsel for further guidance in the immediate timeframe," Kauerauf wrote in an email to county health administrators that was obtained by The Kansas City Star. "We hope to issue our response as soon as possible."

At least six departments had issued similar statements halting COVID work as of Thursday night, including agencies in Pemiscot, New Madrid, Scott and Dunklin counties — all in the Bootheel — and Laclede County, northeast of Springfield.

McDonald County Health Department officials in southwest Missouri also issued a statement and told residents in Facebook comments that they will continue only to report case numbers and call people who test positive to inform them of recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We have talked to other health (departments) and several lawyers," the department wrote. "The way it is written we are unable to enforce any public health orders therefore we can not isolate positive cases."

Asked if it could order isolation for other illnesses, McDonald health officials wrote, "We are unable to do that now as well."

Two departments covering four counties north of Kansas City — Daviess, Gentry, DeKalb and Worth — said they would no longer issue quarantine orders for schoolchildren, while Carroll County in north central Missouri said simply that it would comply with the court decision. Several others said they were unsure how to proceed.

In November, attention initially focused on how Green's ruling effectively stopped local health officials from issuing quarantine and other orders absent approval from a local governing body. Many of the rules Green struck down were already limited this year by passage of a new state law that requires local public health rules to be approved by governing bodies such as county councils.

But Schmitt's letter this week has drawn renewed attention to the ruling and highlighted the judge's more far-reaching pronouncements.

Green declared unconstitutional entire sections of Missouri regulations dealing with infectious diseases. Those include provisions that go beyond quarantines and closing businesses to include "notification to potentially exposed individuals" and "notification to the public of the risk or potential risk of the disease" and providing information to avoid or "appropriately respond" to the exposure.

Schmitt's letter, citing Green's ruling, threatened legal action if local health departments do not drop mask mandates, quarantine rules or other public health orders. Kauerauf's letter to local health agencies last week noted the ruling curbed departments' powers to issue isolation and quarantine rules, and left unclear whether they could still require people who may have been exposed to the virus to isolate or quarantine.

Chris Prener, an assistant professor of sociology at Saint Louis University who tracks COVID-19 data in Missouri, said on Twitter that the developments represented "multiple local health departments throwing in the towel at an incredibly dangerous time for our state, all thanks to a malicious lawsuit and a judge's incredible overreaction."

Schmitt has made overturning COVID-19 mitigation rules in municipalities and school districts across the state a central goal of his office as he campaigns for higher office. But a spokesman suggested Thursday that he only intended to stop local health departments from issuing orders, not halt the COVID-19 response of counties altogether.

"We're grateful that the Laclede County Health Department has ceased their COVID-19 public health orders like their quarantine order," Schmitt's spokesman Chris Nuelle said in an email Thursday in response to Laclede County's statement, the first to draw widespread attention. "Any further decisions beyond ceasing quarantine orders or similar public health orders should be directed to them."

Green's decision may not be the final word on Missouri law. His ruling came in a lawsuit brought against COVID-19 health orders last year by St. Louis-area resident Shannon Robinson, Church of the Word and Satchmo's Bar and Grill, a Chesterfield restaurant that had fought St. Louis County's indoor dining restrictions. The Satchmo's owner, Ben Brown, is now running for a state Senate seat.

Schmitt doesn't plan to appeal the ruling, leaving it unclear whether anyone will attempt to intervene to escalate the case to a higher court. Kauerauf had asked the attorney general to appeal but was refused; the department also said it would not appeal using outside counsel.

DHSS didn't comment on Thursday.

"This is what it's come to," House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat, tweeted. "With a new variant we're learning more about, during cold and flu season, when Missourians are planning Holiday gatherings, AG Schmitt is threatening local health authorities into not reporting anything COVID related."

In Laclede County, health administrator Charla Baker warned local health care providers and businesses of the suspension of COVID work on Wednesday, a day ahead of the public announcement. It prompted questions from the manager of the Jordan Valley Community Health Center clinic there, according to emails obtained by the Star through a public records request.

"This means I will need to inform my medical team not to report positives to your office and also not to tell the patient to expect a call from the Health Dept with quarantine instructions?" the clinic manager wrote.

Baker responded that she would continue tracking county cases internally with information the clinic reports to the state, and confirmed there would be no calls from the health department. She said the situation was "complicated" and could change with more DHSS guidance, but called that "unlikely."

She also told the county's Office of Emergency Management of the decision, writing: "WHAT A MESS WE NOW ARE IN!!!!!!"
https://nordot.app/842131911265763328?c ... 7532812385

So we won't know how bad it is in Missouri due to a Repug that is running for the US Senate. It is no longer the Show Me State.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

3600
Schmitt doesn't plan to appeal the ruling, leaving it unclear whether anyone will attempt to intervene to escalate the case to a higher court. Kauerauf had asked the attorney general to appeal but was refused; the department also said it would not appeal using outside counsel.
A Circuit judge's ruling is not final, someone needs to take it to a higher court instead of moaning and groaning.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Amazon [Bot], Google [Bot], Semrush [Bot] and 3 guests